quare

[Jonathan Lighter]

HDAS explains that "the cross" referred to any kind of criminality,
including thievery, though it seems to have referred more to habitual crime
than a single incident.

Of course, if the phrase came trippingly to the defendant's tongue, perhaps
his past was more checkered than it might seem at first glance.

JL

On Tue, Mar 3, 2009 at 8:57 AM, Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com> wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: quare
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> But would a person be likely to be able to work a swindle alone, while
> drunk?
>
> -Wilson
> –––
> All say, "How hard it is that we have to die"---a strange complaint to
> come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
> -----
> -Mark Twain
>
>
>
> On Tue, Mar 3, 2009 at 12:20 AM, Douglas G. Wilson <douglas at nb.net> wrote:
> > ---------------------- Information from the mail header
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> > Sender: Â  Â  Â  American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> > Poster: Â  Â  Â  "Douglas G. Wilson" <douglas at NB.NET>
> > Subject: Â  Â  Â Re: quare
>  >
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >
> >> [the perp] said that he had always been a "quare" man until this
> morning, when he got drunk and took to the cross.
> >> New York Morning Express, January 21, 1846, p. 7, col. 1
> >>
> >> The OED has 2 meaning for quare (adjective): the first = "queer" -- this
> cites Brendan Behan's play The Quare Fellow, along with earlier passages,
> but does not mention that Behan explains (somewhere) that in English or
> Irish prisons, a "quare fellow" was a man awaiting his hanging (if I
> remember correctly, 40 years after reading it); the second evidently applies
> here, meaning "good, excellent", with the earliest citation coming from
> 1880, and the only citation that applies the word to a person is from 1996.
> > -
> >
> > What does "took to the cross" mean? In isolation I might guess something
> > like "embraced Christianity" or "entered the ministry", but I suppose
> > here (given the limited context) maybe more like "resorted to swindling".
> >
> > Certainly I would presume "a quare man" (in isolation) = "a queer man",
> > with the odd spelling pointing to an Irish or dialectal-US
> > pronunciation. There are various published examples of this "quare" from
> > appropriate dates.
> >
> > Assuming that "taking to the cross" is something disreputable, one might
> > consider the possibility of "quare" being a typo. for "square" here.
> >
> > Is more information available from extended context?
> >
> > -- Doug Wilson
> >
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> >
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